


with treasured hands (to take you in the sun)

by okayantigone



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Angst, Emperor Darth Vader, F/M, Flashbacks, Force Ghost(s), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M, Sith force ghosts because i said so, Tatooine (Star Wars), Tatooine Slave Culture, The Force, anakin killed palpatine and became emperor, anakin loves his children, call me england because i'm doing whatever the fuck i want with the eu, playing fast and loose with canon, post-mustafar
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:55:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24240907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: "you would seek to," anakin is so indignant, he splutters and goes speechless, but his eyes, furious and golden, are burning holes into obi-wan's face. finally, he picks his words up, "you would take my children from me," he snarls finally, "when they were all i had left?""you killed children," obi-wan emphasizes, hard, unwavering. the high ground must be treating him good. anakin hates him."none of them were mine," anakin says, and then stiffens, as if too, like obi-wan is just realizing what words had left his mouth. but he does not take them back. obi-wan can't bear to look at him.
Relationships: Bail Organa/Breha Organa, Owen Lars/Beru Whitesun, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 9
Kudos: 69





	with treasured hands (to take you in the sun)

**Author's Note:**

> this is an entirely too self indulgent series about anakin trying to bring peace to his new empire after he kills darth sidious

anakin skywalker will never not hate sand. the dunes of tatooine mock him with their vast pallor. an expanse of sand and little else stretches out before him, glittering like rusted gold, the flecks catching in the twin suns and bouncing off in the trembling air. the summer heat is brutal in a way he remembers well, and he grinds his teeth until his jaw aches.

he’d sworn to himself he was never coming back here, with his mother’s blood crusted beneath his nails. and obi-wan had known that, and had thought himself clever. anakin was nothing if not an oath-breaker.

he’s sweating through the thin fabric of his billowing white shirt, the soft linen clinging to his torso, and forces himself to grin and bear it, like he had as a child. the light reflecting off luke’s brilliant, sky-blue eyes makes any hardship worth it. he sits on his cloak, spread out on the dunes overlooking owen and beru’s farm, and watches his son toddle among the eddies picked up by the wind, reaching up to trace the patterns of dust in the air. to him, tatooine will always be a home, where he is happy and loved, and one day, if he ever chooses to move away to some other part of the galaxy, he will only ever look back on his childhood with happiness.

it’s the only reason anakin hasn’t burned the whole place down to the ground yet. that, and the fact that he would never desecrate his mother’s grave. they had been happy here too, sometimes. life had not always been coarse and rough. he’d clung to those moments as a child, and as a young man, when he’d thought this life might break him.

if it were up to him, he’d take luke away right now, call this whole ridiculous ruse off, and spirit him away on the the executor, take him back to cosuscant, and raise him in finery and wealth, where he’d never know a single day of hardship. but luke loves his home here too – loves his aunt and uncle, and his little friends from the villages. and he would grow up resenting his father for taking him away, and resentment, anakin knows well to be a poison like no other.

he lets himself stretch out on his cloak, and breathe the brutally dry air, and tune into the force. there’s not a living thing for miles and miles here, except for them, and owen and beru, and the platoon of storm troopers guarding the perimeter.

while a strategically unimportant shithole of a planet, tatooine is a brewing hub of organized crime, which had been enough on paper to justify deploying a small military garrison to set up in mos eisley and with ruthless efficiency dispose of anyone who so much as looked at the moisture farm.

when he’d been a child, he’d had precious few things that were his own. he’d earned everything that he could possess with his own blood and sweat, and he knows now, that had he never left tatooine, he would have certainly been ready to kill to keep those things. sometimes, that starving child rears its sun-kissed head, like now, when he thinks, possessively, of his children, and of owen’s family, and how they’re all he has left in the world. he, who rules the galaxy, and yet has nothing to call truly his own.

his master – either of them – would surely have some long-winded wisdom about irony. he doesn’t care to hear it. certainly, palpatine is dead, though his smug force ghost makes the occasional appearance, when he’s least welcome. obi-wan has wisely cut himself off from the force, and though anakin’s left the hunt for now, to focus on untangling the political mess his dead mentor left him, he will, eventually, get back on track with tying that particular loose end up.

for now, he will content himself with these stolen moments of sitting in the sun, and watching his son play in the sand and marvel at the world around him with the childish eagerness that comes from not knowing what evil truly is. he doesn’t know better. by god, anakin wishes he’ll never have to learn.

beru had taken the day to do some needed shopping in the city, though it was a flimsy excuse at best, for avoiding his presence. owen was still around though, pittering about the farm, and had deputized several of his storm troopers for some heavy lifting. anakin had not offered to help, because owen hadn’t asked. he keeps throwing suspicious glances at them, like he thinks anakin might do something untoward at any minute, like turn into a monster, or worse – actually take luke away.

he calls out to luke, and his voice carries, and pleasure warms his heart when luke turns to follow his voice, and join him on his cloak. he’s tempered off bringing things that aren’t easily found on tatooine, because beru had kindly asked him not to spoil luke too much, not to make him question why he couldn’t always have the nice things that his illustrious father could afford to provide for him. he would have buried their little farm in credits, if they’d let him. he’d call rain down from the skies every single day, and make them a fortune that way.

luke nudges his knee with one chubby hand, smiles brilliantly up at him, perfect and untouched. they would have had the same eyes, if anakin still had blue eyes, but his nose, and the line of his brow are all padme, whereas leia has inherited his severe, arrogant profile, even at her young age, already serious and frowning a lot. he opens his arms, and lets luke settle against his chest. beru’s requests notwithstanding, he’s brought persimmons, and pears from naboo, and weird desert cheeses luke seems oddly prone to enjoying, and little sandwiches cut into crust-less triangles.

he spreads a napkin in luke’s lap, and hands him one, and luke takes it, easy and trusting, unaccustomed to checking for mould or sharp things in his food, or poison, as the case would be. anakin would burn in a thousand more fires, if it means his son never has to do those things.

they eat in companiable silence, because luke is too focused on eating, and because anakin is not entirely sure how to make conversation, just yet, with a child. the problems that had troubled him at that age have nothing to do with luke’s own serious and valid concerns.

it startles him when he hears him speak when he’s done with the food. his voice is bright and clear like crystal glass. he says:

“why are you so tired?”

anakin isn’t sure how to answer him. he knows, in the knowing that comes with his connection to the force, that luke doesn’t just mean for right now, because right now, he’s actually pretty well-rested, all things considered. he means in general, so young, yet already able to sense the permanent miasma of exhaustion that clings to his father’s scarred shoulders. he answer in a way luke can, hopefully, understand.

“i work a lot.”

luke accepts it easily, put his arms around him, gives him a cheese-smeared kiss on the cheek, and in that moment, briefly, anakin is healed, and all his damage melts away into the nether.

that night, after luke’s been safely deposited in his bed, tucked lovingly under soft blue blankets, his does his part, cleaning dishes under the tinny stream of beru’s sonic kitchen faucet.

“you don’t have to do that,” she says, uselessly, hovering at his shoulder, and fretting uncomfortably.

“i want to,” he says simply. domesticity had always been a thing he thieved shamelessly. he and padme had never had that, and now she’s gone, and he wants to wash a dish after dinner, and pretend that this could have ever been his life. she studies the way his mechanic arm’s plates move and whirr under the stream. it’s not much good for delicate work, though his other hand is no longer much good either. he had never fully regained temperature sensitivity in his fingers. he’d picked the roast out from the oven earlier, and beru had let out a terrified noise for his safety. he’d held up his hand for her, and she’d watched, in terrified fascination, as the burned skin knitted itself back together. his body healed burns instinctively now.

owen had frowned. he never does much besides frown. anakin often wonders if this brother he’d never met had smiled so much more before their mother was killed. because shmi had been a mother to him too, hadn’t she? wasn’t the whole reason he could even be here to begin with? sometimes he wonders what if would have been like, if they’d never taken him away to begin with. he wonders if cliegg lars would have bought him too, in that market. he likes to think that maybe yes, he would have. then he and owen would have been brothers, with the easy camaraderie that brothers have. he’d never know the name sheev palaptine, and padme amidala would have faded to nothing but a beautiful dream.

“he’s going to start asking questions soon, you know,” owen says unhappily.

“i know.”

leia had already started. maybe it was because she was being raised by politicians, and had no choice but to hear all the things that were being said about him. in a way, luke had almost gotten the better end of the deal.

“he’ll want to know why you only visit sometimes. where you go when you’re not here. he’ll ask about his mother,” owen continues.

“i know,” anakin doesn’t quite snap. the dark side hums around him, envelops him and quiets the embers where his heart should have been.

“what are you going to tell him?” beru asks tentatively. anakin wants to buy her a hundred thousand beautiful houses, and rooms full of fine silks and bright jewels. he sees her, and imagines his mother’s life on this farm, tending to a merciless land.

“the truth,” he says simply.

“he might hate you, you know,” owen says, quietly.

sometimes anakin wonders if it’s the unkind nature of tatooine that has rendered them both unkind, or if losing two mothers in quick succession had done to owen what losing shmi had done to anakin.

“he might,” he agrees simply. “but that’s a problem for the future.”

“can’t you try to – “ beru makes a vague gesture in the air, which he knows is her meaning to imply he could use the force to divine the correct answers.

“the force doesn’t work that way.”

obi-wan had always so exhausted whenever he had to say that to some hopeful youngling, who believed magic would provide the answer to the universe. now he knows why.

“when are you coming back?” owen asks. his voice implies he hopes it won’t be for a while.

god, the fight they’d had when anakin had first showed up had made the walls shake, and it wasn’t just because anakin was lashing out with the force.

“another standard month or so. if nothing comes up,” his previous visit had been delayed by a particularly ambitious attempt on the side of the senate to have him declared a war criminal and put to the death. the goddamn palpatine faction would all shit themselves if they knew exactly who their favored emperor had been. he’d done them all a favor by dispatching the old man, and they were lucky not to know it.

“right.” owen says. he looks like he wants to say something more.

“you’re all… okay, right?” anakin asks, awkwardly, and curses his tongue, not for the first time. words don’t come easily to him, like they did to padme, or to palpatine, or even the goddamn jedi council. he’s not eloquent, though he’s trying to learn. “you have… everything you need?”

“we don’t need your charity,” owen says harshly.

“it’s not charity when you’re raising my son,” anakin replies hotly. beru looks distinctly uncomfortable.

“we don’t want anything of yours,” owen says, looks him straight in the eye as he does. most people avoid his gaze. the gold unsettles them. it’s not a natural color for humans, betrays his true nature easily. owen doesn’t seem to have a problem calling him out. anakin would trade every single senator currently on his council for a hundred owens, if it meant less sycophants and more work getting done. but honesty is a two-bladed knife. owen says:

“child murderer.”

beru winces.

anakin decides this is a good time to call it a day.

the executor welcomes him with the clinical sharpness of an excellently ordered imperial ship, and he takes infinite comfort in it, shedding the dust and warmth of tatooine. he spends hours in the shower, the water freezing cold, beating brutally against his naked back. he leans on the mirrored black tile with his arms, and forces himself to breathe. these days his body runs too hot, or too cold, and never the right temperature, flinging itself in between states of fever, or else – hypothermia, while trying to strike an appropriate balance. the heat of tatooine clings to him. his teeth chatter, and he clenches his jaw, and grinds his molars with cracking force.

after mustafar, his world had been one of pain, and little else, for the first few weeks. palpatine had saved his life, but it was little more than vanity on his part. he could have just as easily left him to die. he still remembers burning. he hadn’t passed out for the longest time. he’d really thought he might burn to death on that god-forsaken planet. it’s why he can’t ever forgive obi-wan. above everything else – it’s this. if their places had been reversed … he likes to think he might have had the kindness to end him.

and in those brutal weeks, while his body still accustomed itself to the pointed lack of functioning limbs, or skin, or tastebuds, and indeed, a functioning air passage, and pain was all his mind could perceive, he’d taken to reaching into the force, relying on it instinctively to move him, to sustain him, and keep him above water – or lava – as it were.

and the force, intuitive as she was, knew what he needed, and revealed itself to him. in the end, he’d done what countless sith apprentices before him had done, and took no small amount of pride in it. he’d drained his master down to a husk to restore his own vitality. in the end, palpatine had almost seemed proud. and, because anakin was nothing if not a keen pupil, he learned from obi-wan’s mistake, and made sure to well and truly kill him. he’d burned his body, and spread the ashes, and had his name inscribed into his family’s tomb on naboo, and then he’d gone, and visited padme, for the first time.

he had not wanted to face her as a monster. she might not have recognized him. but he was now restored, to his former appearance. some burn scars remained. he hadn’t really bothered with the cosmetic over his chest and back, far more concerned with the internal damage, and – most pressingly – three limbs he was rather fond of.

he’d stood in her tomb, shrouded in darkness, and stared at the smooth pallor of her face, carved in marble. and he was sorry. he was so, so impossibly sorry. 

palpatine had appeared to him for the first time then, tinged a delicate, spider-spun blue. he looked the way he had on their first meeting, kindly and – in his own way – handsome. fatherly. anakin had loved him too. that was always his problem. he loved – too easy, and too hard, without restraint. and in the end – well. he was the only one to survive, wasn’t he.

“i was … terribly fond of her, you know,” sheev said. “and i really did mean… to help you save her.”

anakin had arched an eyebrow at him, wordless.

“i’m dead, dear boy. why would i lie to you?”

“why would you do anything? at this point, you’d probably lie for fun.”

his master regarded him from beyond the veil. “well… yes. probably.”

they stood together in silence for the rest of that night. anakin wanted badly to believe him.

“i saw him, you know,” palpatine said.

“saw who?”

“darth plagueis. my master,” his lips tremble with something like a smile.

“oh?”

“he’d been angry with me, of course. and proud too, i think. like i am of you. keep an ear out. he might visit you.”

“well… i am his grand-apprentice.”

palpatine’s hand touched his shoulder, and passed clean through it.

“that is amazingly funny.” he said, and shook his head.

anakin watched him fade in the light of the dawn.

when he felt his joints ache, he turned the water off. he was shivering uncontrollably, but at least the constant, painful heat coiled at his core had abated. daaè, one of the nurses who’d monitored his healing, was under the impression that the wild veering between temperatures was his body attempting to restore itself to balance after the intense trauma of burning alive. and since no one else had come back from this kind of damage before, he was more inclined to believe her than not.

he glanced at his datapad on the way to bed, and wished he hadn’t. hundreds of messages required his immediate attention. at least half of those he could delegate, but to do so he would have to actually read them. and that was certainly going to have to be an issue for tomorrow’s anakin. tonight’s anakin was exhausted deep within his bones, with the kind of tired only tatooine made him, a tiredness he knew he’d never truly shake. even luke could see it in him, and he was a child.

he sat cross legged in his bed, and rested his hands on his knees, then took a deep breath of clean, cool, filtered air. he could feel every single person on the ship. on command deck, the pilots were preparing for a lightspeed jump. the engineering hub was pared down to essential personnel, while the alpha and beta shift were asleep. a storm trooper was right outside his door, patrolling.

the force hummed appreciatively when he reached out, and he exhaled.

“be with me,” he said. “be with me. be with me. be with me.”

like a mantra. he called down the coil to a thousand generations of sith lords before him, and asked them for their guidance. sometimes, they would clamour to respond to him. darth plagueis was especially talkative, and revan could be reached, when the mood struck. but tonight there was nothing but silence, and an unspoken comfort. the force was saying to him you don’t need this right now. you need to be alone now. the force was telling him go to sleep, anakin.

who was he, to deny the force her wishes?

the first months, after he’d killed palpatine, he’d let the empire run itself, thanks to the all-powerful galactic bureaucratic mechanism. he’d spent every waking moment in his rooms, begging anyone out there to be with him. he had stretched himself beyond the limits of his ability, scouring into the vast expanse of the force for his children. palpatine had really thought spitting out the secret would save him. it hadn’t, in the end, so now, as a force ghost, he was horribly smug about the whole deal.

“i won’t help you with this, since you were so confident you could do it on your own.”

“go haunt maul,” anakin had snapped.

“maul doesn’t need my guidance like you do,” palpatine had replied smugly, and then kindly obliged him and fucked off.

but in the end, it wasn’t the force that had led him to his children. he had done it on his own.

someone had noticed that the queen of alderaan, who’d previously been greatly plagued by her inability to conceive, had announced the miraculous birth of a new alderaanian princess. and had also aquired a very distinct looking protocol droid. he could have kissed jar jar for pointing out the coincidence.

then he’d promptly invented himself a diplomatic trip to alderaan and invited himself into the queen’s palace.


End file.
